In the Spaces Between Where Memories Live and Die
by amnesia-machine
Summary: Dean had his car, and for as long as Castiel rode in the passenger seat he had him too.


Dean tells him secrets just to break the silence.

Dean gives Castiel all the words he couldn't say through the apocalypse, because he needed to stay focused. That was a battlefield he couldn't escape, but now he is left in the space between the war and going home. Only Dean doesn't have a home, never had a home... couldn't have a home. He had his car, and for as long as Castiel rode in the passenger seat he had him too. He let the words spill one evening on a deserted patch of I-70. Just fields and four empty lanes and a fifth of Jack.

"I love you."

He tells him just to break the silence.

It's been days since Sam jumped and Dean has just been aimlessly eating up asphalt. It's been days and it's eating him alive.

So one night in a dim motel room, lit only by the glaring red and orange lights of the sign outside, he finds Castiel's mouth.

He finds them skin to skin on threadbare sheets.

Castiel mouths words in Enochian against Dean's spine. Soft words that don't have a proper translation into any language that human's speak. Against a patch of skin that isn't quite so rough as the rest of him.

The skin that he made, the spine that he carved, the muscle that he stretched down long limbs. And Castiel's hand rests over the burn on Dean's arm where his grace had seared him. Just an extra tax on top of the unfortunate costs he paid to be dragged from Hell.

Castiel mutters blessings into Dean's shoulder, all breathy heat and a low rumble in his chest. Dean starts to ask what he's saying but instead just pulls away for a moment, turns, and captures those words in his mouth.

They fuck to feel alive. To know they've won. They fuck because it's all still just a haze. A haze of hellfire and angelic light.

It's walking on broken glass.

It's all just been a bad dream.

In these moments there is love, and family. A sense of victory.

They are alive. The world is calm.

And it all terrifies Dean.

* * *

His car eats miles, Dean runs on fumes. And Cas is quiet.

Sometimes Dean forgets just who, just _what_, Castiel is. He forgets that this man taking refuge in the next seat is a being of divine grace. He's not a man. Not anymore.

When Cas fell it wasn't a plummet. It wasn't a rock dropping in the pond, a meteor breaking through the atmosphere... it was a slow stride.

So Dean forgets that it hurt.

Cas was just about as graceful... bad choice of words. He was about as elegant as you could imagine an angel to be when they're cut off from Heaven. Coasting down.

Dean forgets that Cas losing his grace felt like his days on the rack.

And so he didn't understand the joy in Castiel when his wings were restored. He forgets that Cas was without them. It was brief, his days as a human. It was short.

He is now, and ever was, a mountain shaped like a man, with power coming in torrents under his borrowed flesh.

Sometimes Dean forgets that Castiel is an angel, and angels belong in Heaven. They don't belong in hourly motels. And they certainly don't belong with Dean Winchester.

He shouldn't be angry that Cas needs to leave.

* * *

"You're antsy," Dean says for the fifth or sixth time now. "If you want to leave then do it. I'll be fine. I lived a long time before you came around, and I can keep going without you too."

That was a lie.

The words are bitter on his tongue, but Cas is forever quiet in his passenger seat. His hands twitch in the place of confined wings. Dean can't take it.

"Dean..."

"You've always got this look on your face like you want to say it. That you're going back to Heaven to play God or archangel to whatever it is you'd be."

"I'm still here because–"

"I'm not going to do something stupid like try to open the cage!"

"That isn't what I was worried about."

Castiel has seen Dean unraveled before. He remembers it well. His eyes blown black in the darkest corners of hell. He's afraid it's happening again. Here on isolated highways and in musty motels. In bottoms of bottles of whiskey.

"Cas, don't worry about me. Just don't. If you're going to leave then leave. Don't draw it out any more." It's like ripping off a bandage. Quick. Painful. But then he can get on with his life. He can't stand it, this living on the edge wondering when the day will come that he'll be all alone.

For the day to come that he has to make good on his last promise to Sam.

It's not over, he swears to himself, until Castiel is gone.

So Lisa can wait another day.

Damn it! He's spent his whole life trying to just keep his family together and safe and now Cas is the last piece.

It was all or nothing with him, but Dean wouldn't say that. Dean wouldn't put that choice, that burden, on Cas. He won't say that he wants Cas to stay with him, on Earth, until it's _all_ over. Until every day is ended. Until he's old and cranky with swollen joints and gray hair and acid reflux.

He pulls over on a quiet road to nowhere and looks at him. Really looks. Cas suppresses a sigh.

"All I want for you, Dean Winchester, is peace and you won't have that if I'm around. You'll keep hunting monsters and demons and the day will come when I will not be able to save you."

Dean glares out at the highway. It's after midnight on a Thursday. It's been just over a month since Sam jumped.

"I'll never have peace if I remember this," he says.

If he remembers he said, "I love you." If he remembers Castiel breathing those words into his chest, saying he loved him too. Every touch and kiss and thrust. The memory of Cas's face as he came. If he remembers he will not find peace. He will find heartbreak.

Going to Lisa would be a lie.

"I can't remember this. If I remember... us, I'll never be able to keep my promise to Sam."

"Dean..."

"I know you can wipe it all away."

"Yes, but I do not want to."

"You can't just leave me with this."

Dean watches the sky for a long time, fuming in his head.

It takes almost five minutes before he can reach out to touch Dean's face.

When Castiel leaves he doesn't say goodbye.

* * *

Castiel silently bares all the secrets Dean has asked him to take away. The dreams and the nights and the broken moments he shared in his sadness and grief and drunken hazes. Late nights marked by the pain on his face.

He lets the loneliness and the heartache fester for a year. He's bitter. He lets Dean's memories and his secrets burn away at him. But something in him jumps when he hears that prayer in his head and he has to force himself not to be there before it is finished. He has to fight away his grimace when he sees Dean face to face for the first time in a year.

But he's sad to see Dean here, in some motel, back to the old routine.

He had wanted so much for this to be over. For him to have some happiness and mundane Thursday afternoons and four walls to call a home.

And had his heart not bled for the Winchesters, had he not saved Sam from Hell...

Maybe Dean would have been happier.


End file.
